The body as a site of communication and performance in storytelling : analyzing the offline and online body in performance, in Lungile Mncube’s The Ancient (2017).

Abstract

This research explores the idea of the body being the site of communication and performance in storytelling. It further examines how storytelling has evolved and how that has affected the“offline” and “online” body. The core of it searches for possibilities of how an offline body can converse with an online body in storytelling. It examines the continual coexisting relationship between offline human body and technology. Moreover, this research is practice-based. Through searching for answers, I workshopped a play called; “The Ancient1” with the cast. In this play two different ways of telling a story are explored, as well as the use of the body in two different spaces. Through the performance there was participation from the audience. It was done through a newly termed method that this research proposes; called the Social Network Interventional Theatre. This method is partly borrowed from applied theatre, however, it is modified with an inclusion of social networks as means of communicating with the world of the performers. Thus the audience were participating with what was happening on stage through the use of their cellphones. In conclusion, this research finds that, it is possible for the offline body to converse with the online body in storytelling. Also, it reveals that the offline body still has power over the behavior of the online body.